News

Moving On

A place to call home at last for Vanessa-Mae, the 27-year-old Singapore-born classical violinist. A friend tells me she will soon be moving into her £2.5m five-bed townhouse in Kensington, after four years of problems with builders. Last year she sacked one bunch, branding them “terrible”, and brought in a replacement team. She is undeterred, though, and has already initiated her next building project. She and boyfriend Lionel Catalan are now, she says, building a ski lodge in Val d’Isère, the Brit-friendly French resort widely regarded as the Clapham of the Alps.

Kerching! Steve McManaman, the former Liverpool and Real Madrid star midfielder, has made an exceptionally handsome profit selling his home on the Wirral — the smart leafy area west of Liverpool popular with top-flight footballers. Records show McManaman, 34, sold Brackenwood, his five-bed family home in Caldy, for £3.25m earlier this year, having paid £900,000 for it in November